


When in Rome

by Nenchen



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Ancient Rome, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Is Trying (Good Omens), Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale is persistent, Aziraphale is smart, Aziraphale trying to cheer Crowley up and failing spectacularly, Canon Compliant, Canon typical alcohol consume, Caring Aziraphale (Good Omens), Communication, Crowley Has Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley Has Issues (Good Omens), Crowley Has Long Hair (Good Omens), Crowley Has a Bad Day (Good Omens), Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Crowley can't admit his feelings about Aziraphale to himself because you know, Crowley has Trauma from the Fall (Good Omens), Crowley has short Hair, Crowley in Denial (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Communicating (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is So Done (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley's Sunglasses (Good Omens), Demon Summoning, Emotional Fallout, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hair cutting as a way to regain control, Hair-pulling, Happy Ending, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Violence, Only Attempted Mind control, Other, Oysters, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Pain, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Sad with a Happy Ending, Scene: Rome 41 AD (Good Omens), Some Humor, Summoning, Summoning Circles, They do love and appreaciate each otehr, Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens), but thats not the main focus, emotional exhaustion, in the painful way, situational humor, they are getting through this i promise, they just cant admit it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 22:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30146415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenchen/pseuds/Nenchen
Summary: The first time it happened Crowley had just been wandering through the desert aimlessly, bored out of his mind because he just couldn’t seem to find any people. And then suddenly there was this pulling sensation, like gravity thousandfold, a magnetic force, something that was pulling him somewhere else and it felt like.It felt like falling had.---The first time Crowley was summoned, he was scared when he didn't need to be.This time, he wasn't. But he really should have been.After he makes it out, he gets found by Aziraphale, and emotions get high.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	When in Rome

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself cry with this fic. Enjoy.

  


The first time it happened Crowley had just been wandering through the desert aimlessly, bored out of his mind because he just couldn’t seem to find any people. And then suddenly there was this pulling sensation, like gravity thousandfold, a magnetic force, something that was pulling him somewhere else and it felt like.

_It felt like falling had._

He was resisting, resisting with everything he had, but there was no escape and suddenly he was away and landed elsewhere.

The expected smell of sulphur, of burned flesh and hair and feathers, burned hopes and dreams, burned self washed over him for a fraction of a second before he came to properly and the reality of the place he now found himself in set in fully.

Reality smelled like herd animals and their dung, like dust and yes, fire but also food and it sounded of talk and laughter and _life_.

It wasn’t hell. This was earth.

And before him, there sat a small child, eleven at most, who looked up at him with big, fascinated, focused eyes.

He tried to speak but his throat only let out a noise that was much more embarrassing than anything he could have said.

This prompted the child to jump up from her, he was pretty sure it was a her but he couldn’t say he was quite familiar with the style of garments, sitting position and grab a goblet filled to the brim with dark red fluid.

Wine.

Wine she offered to him, the beverage most of them reserved as offering for the gods, and it was disconcerting. He took it and drank it all down before the offer could be reconsidered. He was _parched,_ and the wine was sour and sweet and oddly velvety on his tongue. It helped him to ground himself back here instead of the other place again fully, wash away the memories.

When he set down the goblet the child was back to staring at him, intensity of her gaze even more forceful now.  In lack of a better idea, he simply stared back. He didn’t even know what language they spoke here, voices too muffled outside the thick cloth walls of the tent.

Finally, in the way of children, she couldn’t hold  it together any more and spoke up.

“Do you know the answers?”

Crowley raised an eyebrow, understanding the words but not their meaning.

“The answers to what, exactly?”

“To my questions!”

“Depends on what questions,” Crowley answered, bemused as the girl huffed in frustration, expression and posture reminding him of a certain angel.

“But Grandfather said, if I have a question that is burning in my very heart, to draw a circle and have an offering and someone with the answer will come!”

Still bemused, Crowley looked down at his feet, where there was indeed a circle drawn around  where he stood in the dusty ground. Who knew. Humans and their inventions. 

“Well, if he said so, then I’m sure I will have the answer you are looking for. Ask me then.”

The girl leaned forward, eyes glittering in excitement.

“I want to know about the stars.”

After a conversation, long enough that Crowley was sure they had passed the child’s bedtime, no matter what time of the day they had started, they left the tent together, the child pulling him along by his hand fearlessly, and the humans around them celebrated. They celebrated the gain of knowledge. And Crowley thought to himself that if humans were able to call him somewhere for asking questions, well. That didn’t seem so bad.

  
  


The second time it happened, it was a young man, mind sharp as a knife. Him, Crowley could not answer. His questions were all about  the creation of tools and Crowley did not even quite grasp what he wanted them for. But he tempted him, asking some questions, lending a bit of reassurance and confidence. Just a few years later he saw one of the tools at a market  and felt an unreasonable amount of pride. Or a reasonable amount. It was only demonic  after all , taking credit for things others accomplished.

  
  


Over the years, the decades, the centuries, he got used to being whisked away every now and then. He had long learned that there was little that could stop humans in pursuit of knowledge. He was vaguely aware that they were writing things down, documenting the rituals for future questioners, but what did he care? It wasn’t as if they could harm him. And for humans to willingly call upon demons, well. He could surely spin that into some fine commendations from hell if needed.

  
  


Hence he wasn’t surprised to find himself in a circle adorned with many sigils once  more . 

However, this time, something was just slightly off. The little amount of sunlight and the damp smells of a basement. The weird thrumming of the sigils. The greedy expression the caller in front of him was wearing.  All in all slightly ominous, and he as a demon should know ominous. He was a fan of ominous. Not when it was directed at him though.

“Oh, mighty Serpent of Eden, Crawler,-”

Crowley winced but didn’t speak up. Yet.

“We have called upon you today to ask of you, powerful and knowledgeable as you are, Creator of Original Sin-”

There was a lot of meaningless babbling interlaced with weirdly awed compliments, as per usual and Crowley zoned out. The last time he had told a human to skip this part, she had been incredibly offended and he hadn’t even gotten any decent offering out of it because she’d sent him away  again immediately . So he  hadn’t done that again. He  idly  wondered what kinds of questions this human would have.

“So we, your ever-faithful servants humbly ask of you to help us gain power over the empire and the emperor, so that we may change it in your image-”

Wait, what?

“What?”

The humans blinked at him.

“We want you to overpower the emperor?”

He blinked, slowly and measuredly, in a way that clearly communicated he had no need to do so and was instead making a statement.

“And how exactly do you propose I do that?”

The humans still seemed  stunned but there was both nervousness and anger showing  underneath .

“Kill him and those that are close to him. Banish our enemies. Bring death and destruction over the immoral bunch and let us restore order.”

“No,” Crowley said before he could even consider it.

Really, destruction of empires and stuff, that was more heaven’s thing. He certainly didn’t feel like murdering a bunch of humans just because some other humans had asked him to. Especially when he could basically taste their greed and bloodlust in the air. If he was sure of anything, then it was that whoever the emperor currently was, these guys would not be an improvement. And really, most empires destroyed themselves just fine.

They gaped at him, before their leader spoke up again, anger clearly having won over the rest of the emotions now.

“But we summoned you. You have to obey our orders!”

“Nope,” Crowley said, popping the ‘p’.

The next few things happened in quick succession.

Crowley  moved to step out of the circle, the man screeched a word in a language that made Crowley’s ears ring and suddenly there was  _p a_ _i_ _n_ .

He hadn’t been reminded of the fall ever since his first summoning, but this time, he was. Viscerally.

When it finally stopped after what felt like an eternity (though less of an eternity than falling had, luckily) and he could focus on the room again, he realized the other man was holding him up by his hair, grinning smugly. His heart was racing. He hadn’t even been aware that was a thing it could do. His mind was doing much the same, screaming at him to find a way out of this situation, out of here, but he didn’t even know what just happened really and that was making things so much harder.

Mind still racing, he raised his fingers to snap , when  suddenly  the door  was kicked in and the basement started to fill with soldiers. More out of habit than conscious thought he hid himself from these new humans and watched as they overpowered his summoners, dragging them out one after another.

The leader was screaming angrily, almost foaming at the mouth, repeating the word of pain and others over and over until Crowley could barely see anymore through the stars dancing in front of his eyes. He could feel something pull at the core of him through the pain, whispers, coaxing him to obey, his sense of self feeling as if underwater, disconnected. He could feel himself starting to give in to the demands and the part of him that was still himself was clinging onto every last thread of self-control to not move, not react, not do anything.

He was exhausted and hurt and terrified.

And then  the leader too got overpowered, knocked out and carried away.

W ith his last conscious thought Crowley made sure the  soldiers wouldn’t take anything except the summoners,  t hen he curled up in his circle and concentrated on not  loosing consciousness, unsure if he’d regain it .

He could  sense the sounds around him change,  sense the few rays of sunshine that  made it into the room move, but  he felt strangely detached from his body. H e couldn’t pin down how much time had passed until he felt capable of moving again. Limbs shaking, he sat up, slowly and carefully, and focussed on breathing until he  could feel something besides the remnants of the searing pain again .  He felt like crying, but demons didn’t cry. Last time he’d tried had been, well, and his tears had evaporated right off his face, leaving burning trails in their wake. No, that wouldn’t make him feel better. 

Still he needed to do something. If Crowley were to let himself reflect on his emotions more, he would have said that he felt violated in a way he’d never been before, at least by humans. With the very core of him under attack and almost under someone else’s control, he struggled to regain it.

What Crowley did admit to himself were two things:

1\. He needed a damn drink.

2\. He really wanted to cut off his hair.

He could still feel the man’s hand pulling at it, the expression accompanying the sensation  seared into his mind. And really, it was just a sensible decision, wasn’t it. To not give enemies anything that could be used against him. 

He took a deep breath, miracled himself a knife, and started cutting. With every strand that fell around him, he felt more in control, more like himself again, until he was done. The last remnants of the pain had subsided, and he was alone. Alone and in control. As safe as he could be. He let himself breathe and finally felt some sort of calm wash over him.

Only to then realize he was probably still stuck in the damn circle.

He lowered his head onto his drawn-up legs, hugging them tight to himself. As if this day couldn’t get any better. One problem after the other.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm and investigate the circle keeping him here. There had to be some way do get out of it. He looked at it closely and found that it did seem to have been rather messed up during all of the fighting.

W ell, here goes nothing.

Ever so carefully, he extended a single finger over the invisible barrier of the circle, half expecting for the pain to return.

It didn’t.

He pushed himself up and stepped out of it, making sure it was messed up beyond recognition, (maybe a little too enthusiastically) and moved towards the hole in the wall where the door had been, to take stock of his situation properly.

The sun was already setting outside, bathing the city and the people walking past in golden light, which gave the scene a quite beautiful and calming impression. But more importantly,  the last remnants of light helped him recognize the city he was in.  Rome. He’d been here for an assignment not terribly long ago actually. 

Almost unthinkingly he miracled himself an inconspicuous outfit, pushed all of the stuff in the basement into a pocket of space he used for storage to deal with later, and stumbled out to find any kind of drinking establishment.

A few minutes later he found one, marked by the smells of food and drinks and the noises of drunkards in a good mood, which probably spoke of good drinks. He stepped inside and up to the counter, barely taking in the rest of the restaurant.

“Give me a jug of whatever you think is drinkable,” he half growled at the person manning the bar.

In the way of good customer service, they barely reacted to anything except his request.

“Jug of house brown. Two sesterces.”

He slid over the coins and took the cup, when a new voice distracted him.

“Crawley-- Crowley?” Came the call from behind him.  
He turned, keeping his expression neutral, if a bit surprised. He hadn’t exactly expected to run into the angel here. To be fair however, he hadn’t thought about much except getting a drink in the last few hours.

“Well… Fancy running into you here,” he said, keeping his voice neutral.

Upon closer inspection the angel seemed rather darkened compared to how he usually looked and Crowley realized he must have miracled himself some of the dark glasses he’d tried out recently. Which was good. He knew the way they hid his eyes usually made him seem untrustworthy and uninterested, not someone interested in casual conversation. And he really didn’t feel like dealing with anyone right now, least of all an angel. Even if the angel was the only bearable one. The angel, however,  seemed impervious to this and cheerfully barged on.

“Still a demon, then?”

“What kind of stupid question is that, "Still a demon"? What else am I going to be, an aardvark?” he snapped.

The angel dithered.

“Salutaria.”

Crowley took a deep, long drink of his beverage, feeling the alcohol wash through his system. Finally. He felt a bit more ready to deal with the angel, not that he had a choice apparently, since the other hadn’t even so much as flinched at his outburst.

“In Rome long?”

Yeah, apparently they were making conversation. Small talk. He didn’t feel like explaining anything, so he decided to lie and distract.

“Just nipped in for a quick temptation. You?”

“I thought I'd try Petronius' new restaurant. I hear he does remarkable things to oysters,” the angel said in a conspirational tone, and Crowley felt his mood lifting despite himself.

Even if humans didn’t stay the same apparently, the angel did. A comforting constant with his love for earth and food and books and everything. It made a certain warmth spread through the ice in Crowley’s stomach. He decided to humour him.

“I've never eaten an oyster,” he mused.

Hadn’t seen the appeal of slimy, briny flesh in tiny quantities, really.

The other let out a shocked little gasp.

“Oh. Oh, well, let me tempt you to-”

The angel interrupted himself and Crowley turned towards him, deeply amused by the angel’s slip up. The other was clearly flustered, and Crowley felt something inside him tug again. Probably residual whatever the fuck that had been.

“Oh, no. No, that's- that's your job, isn't it?” the angel said, and fluttered with his eyelashes, and Crowley realized he really was being tempted here. How very interesting.

“Usually, yes,” he answered, not giving the angel anything to work with.

They both knew it. If the angel wanted his company, he’d have to finish what he’d started.

He looked at Crowley, his little unsure smile wavering even more for a bit. Well, that was that then. Crowley turned back to the bar, when the angel spoke up again.

“So, will you join me? I also hear he has some of the best wine in Rome.”

When Crowley looked back, the angel was smiling brightly at him. Crowley looked back at his cup, and then back at the angel. Ah, fuck it. Getting drunk on good stuff was always more fun, and the angel was always good for the good stuff and a laugh or two. Not like his evening could get any worse.

He tossed back the rest of his drink and stood up.

“Alright. Lead the way then.”

  
  


A few hours later, Crowley was finally well and truly sloshed, and his mood had improved vastly, which in no little part was due to the angel, who was also quite uproariously drunk.

Crowley had enjoyed the oysters, and even more so the house wine, and even more so Aziraphale enjoying the oysters and the house wine, and they had eaten and drank and talked until they’d been kicked out. Which Aziraphale had made an incredibly amusing fuss about. Then the angel had invited him back to his place, where he’d procured some even better wine and they had gotten into a debate that ranged from which grapes made the best wine and if the feet of the wine makers had any influence on the final taste over abhorrent foods to pretty much anything in the world.

Crowley was laughing himself silly about the face the angel had made when he’d told him  about the maggot cheese speciality he’d discovered recently on his travels, and the angel smiled back at him  goodnaturedly .

“Mmmh, good- good to see you in a better mood again, dear. Looked so angry before. Angry and saaaaad,” he slurred and Crowley tensed immediately.

He hadn’t thought the angel had realized the state he’d been in.

“Wasn’t,” he deflected.

“Were,” the angel said decidedly.

“Ah, yeah? And what are you doing, sidling up to an angry demon then? Not smart, that.”

Aziraphale turned  towards him and rolled his eyes .

“Not angry at me.”

“So? People take their anger out on other people aaaaaaall the time. Some of my best work that.”

Aziraphale fixed him with  a look.

“You wouldn’t do that to me. That would be unsporting!”

Crowley laughed at the honest offence in Aziraphale’s voice and Aziraphale pouted.

“Well, then, do you want to tell me about why you weren’t in such a bad mood? I take it your temptation went wrong? You know, I do always say that evil contains the seed of it’s own destruction-” Aziraphale blabbered on, stretching his legs far enough to press up against Crowley’s.

Crowley’s leg tingled slightly at the point of contact  in a nice way, but it was by far not enough to work against the rest of his body  prickling as if he’d been dunked into ice water.

“It didn’t,” Crowley hissed, pulling his leg back and up against his chest instead.

He felt sick and suddenly very sober and very much like he didn’t want to talk to the angel any longer, so he stood up, the quick movement making his head spin.

“I should leave. Good wine. I’ll see you when I see you,” he said, his voice sounding oddly cold and distant through the rushing of blood in his ears.

He moved towards the door, ignoring the sounds of the angel getting up behind him.

“Crowley? Wait, I didn’t mean-”

A hand on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks and he didn’t even think, he just pushed back.

“Don’t touch me!”

Breathing hard, he stood and looked at the angel sitting on the floor now again, looking surprised and hurt.

“I’ve had enough of being grabbed and trapped and the rest of it today. Leave it,” he hissed, balling his hands to fists when he noticed they were shaking.

For some reason he couldn’t move away.

Maybe it was the expression on Aziraphale’s face, maybe he’d just exhausted himself enough today, but he kept standing stock still, until he couldn’t take it any more and dropped his head, tension never leaving his body.

“Crowley?”

Aziraphale’s voice was soft and careful, the same one he’d heard him use on hurt humans and animals. How unnecessary. He wasn’t in distress. He was just. Just tired, tired of this day and tired of having his demonicity. Demonness? His being a demon rubbed in. Not like he’d chosen that for himself. He could feel his fingernails digging into his palms harshly. The feeling was grounding.

“Crowley, would you sober up and talk to me properly?” the angel said, voice still soft but on top of that sounding sober himself.

“No.”

“Crowley-”

“No, I don’t want to be sober and I don’t want to talk! I went out to get drunk today and to not talk and if you hadn’t interfered I would have done just that and things would be perfectly fine!”

He ignored the nagging voice in his head that told him he would not have been fine, that in fact running into Aziraphale had made his evening leagues better up until now.

“And now I’m leaving.”

He turned and finally got his legs to move, stomping angrily into the cool night. He ignored the footsteps behind him. If the angel wanted to follow him, so be it. He sped up, walking through narrow passages, climbing over walls, sure the angel would soon give up and go home and leave him alone.

But the footsteps behind him, if sounding a bit more hurried than his own, a bit like they were struggling to keep up, never ceased, until he finally had enough.

He turned around quickly enough that the other almost walked into him and hissed right into his face.

“What. Do. You. _Want_.”

He  could feel his sunglasses had slid down his nose and his eyes were fully yellow, looking as demonic as he could without altering this corporation.

The angel barely even flinched.

“To know what has you so upset,” he answered, looking straight into Crowley’s eyes.

The angel’s expression was soft and earnest and Crowley hated it, hated the way it made him feel. He wanted to growl something else, when Aziraphale added the one word they never really used with each other, because it was just as, if not more unfit than ‘thank you’ in conversations between two immortal adversaries.

“ _Please_.”

How was it that Aziraphale was the one who sounded hurt now? Almost vulnerable?

Crowley swallowed heavily and pushed his glasses back up. Inside of him the part that didn’t want to deal with this was slowly getting crushed by the part of him that desperately didn’t want to deal with this  _alone_ . 

H e felt alone, and vulnerable and weak and he was tired of it.

“Alright,” he croaked, the word barely making it past his lips. “Alright, but we need to go somewhere else. Walls have eyes and ears and humans do even more so.”

The angel simply nodded, solemnly and this time it was Crowley following him instead, silently through the city until they were stood in front of his house again.

“I warded it. No one will get in without me knowing. However feel free to add what you need.”

Crowley simply nodded and put up another barrier,  knowing he wouldn’t feel safe if he didn’t. Who against whom and how the angel’s wards worked, or how well, considering they hadn’t reacted to his presence at all. Which either meant shoddy work or things Crowley couldn’t muster up the energy to think about right now.

They had barely made it in and closed the door, when the words broke out of Crowley.

“I was summoned.”

Aziraphale froze immediately, and Crowley desperately continued, not wanting the angel to turn. He wasn’t sure he could take seeing the angel’s expression, whatever it was, disdain, horror or worse, sympathy.

“Wasn’t the first time but usually they just ask me questions. They want me to help them with finding out more stuff about the universe and all but. Not this time. They wanted me to kill people and I said no and then they almost _made_ me.”

He wanted to say more, to explain himself, to  justify why he’d denied the request and about how they’d almost made him-  on second thought, maybe he didn’t want to talk about that part.

But before he could say anything, Aziraphale turned and his throat closed up.

The expression on the other’s face was the one he hadn’t expected, simply because he’d never seen it on this angel.

Pure, unbridled fury.

Crowley took a n instinctive step back, coming up against the door.

“Where are they?”

Aziraphale’s voice was booming, interlaced with something holy, cold, hard and cutting, that Crowley had never even heard a hint of in Aziraphale’s voice before. He swallowed, his throat suddenly very dry, his heart beating too fast again. He tried to answer but his body failed him, too preoccupied with the entire fear response thing.

Aziraphale’s expression softened immediately.

“Oh, oh dear, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to- I don’t know what came over me,” he said, shocked.

His tone sounded like atonement.

Surprisingly enough, Crowley found he wasn’t truly scared of the angel. As soon as the other’s face had softened, the Angel had turned back into Aziraphale, the angel he knew, the angel he now realized he could never be truly scared of, simply because the other would never want him to be. He tried not to linger on  what this revealed about him .

“It’s alright,” Crowley croaked, with instant forgiveness that came dangerously close to absolution.

He pushed his sunglasses up once more, even though they hadn’t really moved from where they were seated on his nose, simply to give his hands something other to do than shake.

“They are probably rotting in some jail somewhere. Got arrested. That’s what set me free. And I took all their stuff.”

Aziraphale pinched his eyes shut in an almost painful expression and breathed a deep, shuddering sigh, visibly pulling himself together.

“May I take a look at what you took?”

“Why?” Crowley said, instantly defensive.

It wasn’t that he thought the angel would use it to hurt him, not really. But he’d thought the same of the humans, hadn’t he? Giving someone this kind of knowledge willingly was terrifying him down to his bones.

“So I’ll know what to search for in order to destroy it,” the angel answered, his tone leaving no room for doubt.

“What?” Crowley asked, flabbergasted. 

“Obviously this can’t happen again, so the materials that allowed humans to do it need to be disposed off,” Aziraphale stated, very calm and matter-of-factly.

Crowley wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it hadn’t been this. He had thought the angel would eventually help him, or at least tell him if he found something, but he had expected to have to convince the angel. To push and probe and persuade. Then again, he’d just seen the angel furious for the very first time, and it had been over h- over those humans. Still, it was hard to wrap his head around the angel’s unusual determination.

“But, but…” he stammered, trying to make sense of it all. “What about Heaven?”

“Heaven?”

“Yeah, won’t. Won’t they object?”

“Oh, I’m quite sure Heaven would hardly approve of humans running around with what basically equates to demonic powers. Not to mention the temptation of this kind of power. No, no, Heaven can’t disapprove of this.”

“A very sound argument,” Crowley answered, too stunned to say anything else.

Aziraphale’s expression turned concerned.

“What about Hell? Will they-”

Crowley laughed.

“Hell? You think any demon, especially the higher-ups fancy the possibility of being controlled by a human of all things? We fell because we didn’t want to obey _God herself_ , why should Hell object.”

“Oh. Quite good then.”

“Well.”

“Well.”

They looked at each other, and blinked.

Crowley, only hesitating for a moment longer, then he reached into the pocket of space and procured one of the books he’d taken from the basement.

“There. That’s one of them. Should be enough, right?”

Aziraphale opened the book and quickly closed it again, his nose crinkling up in displeasure at what he’d seen.

“Enough to get the gist, surely, yes. Would probably be sensible to make some plans on how to best dispose of stuff. And think of something to do about oral lore, maybe spread some false information.”

“Yeah, probably,” Crowley agreed, suddenly feeling very tired again at the prospect of it all. “Or, you know what we should do first? Get drunk again. I need a break.”

“Ah, yes, marvellous idea,” Aziraphale said with a relieved little smile. But he never did let go of the book.

  
  


The next morning Crowley left, his limbs heavy from wine but the rest of him lighter.

He knew he could still be summoned again any moment, but now he had a plan, and somebody to help execute it.

He closed his eyes and enjoyed the breeze  blowing in his short hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to tell me about spelling errors, grammar errors and britpick and to tell me about any tags you think I need to add.  
> Come visit my tumblr at [goodduckingomens](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/goodduckingomens).  
> Comments and Kudos very much motivate me, so please leave some if you had fun(?)! Keysmash comments appreaciated for the true Crowleys out there.


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